Leadership

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Happy 70th birthday to my sister! Hard to believe we’ve both grown old, but here we are. Her name is Lexie. So I’m giving her a shout out today.

We’re on day 9 of our 30 day micro course and today we’re going to talk about potential. What could be so we avoid what might have been.

This follows yesterday’s philosophy or view of the world because leadership is largely the result of such things…including possibility thinking. Have you ever wondered why some people aim so high and seem to achieve great things while others can’t seem to perform at much more modest levels? Most of us grew up hearing the Henry Ford quote…

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.

But I fear many of us still don’t believe it’s true. Instead, we think things may be well beyond our control. 

I learned so many valuable lessons early in my leadership career. Among them, how dangerous our ideas can be. And how limiting they can be. For example, we may think “If only I could earn another $10,000 a year my life would be terrific.” Early in my career, there was a barometer that many professional people used to gauge whether they were on track or not. It was earning your age. In other words, if you were 25 and earning 25 thousand dollars, you were on track. If you were 25 and earning only 19 thousand dollars, well, you weren’t doing so well. That math stopped working pretty quickly as inflation grew out of control. Then the magic number was to hit 6 figures. I mean, if you earned $100,000 you were stinking rich!

But guess what? 

A funny thing happened on the way to thinking income would answer all of life’s problems. The money seemed to disappear for everybody who got any kind of an increase. Time and again I saw myself and employees increase earnings only to see all of our lives pretty unchanged after about 3-6 months. Once we got past the initial surge, it seemed our lives went back to the normals of the past. 

I noticed similar things with our enterprises. Our companies grew to some comfortable place and growth, improvement, efficiency seemed to become static. I didn’t expect to fight so hard to get people to believe that quantum leaps were possible. It was among the most depressing truths I had to learn. I was optimistic that things could always be better. We simply had to figure out how. But I realized most people, especially in my early years, didn’t truly believe it. Most people were quite content to settle. To accept small or no improvement. 

I was driven to avoid regret on one hand and driven to accel on the other to see if my high expectations could be met. It was challenging. It was vastly more fun! 

I could never get excited about a 2% increase. I wondered, “What’s wrong with a 25% increase? Or a 50% increase?” 

It speaks to a real challenge facing leaders. What do you expect? Not just in sales or profits, but in people? 

For most of my professional life, I’ve been criticized for expecting too much from people. Not because I’m hard-charging, but because I talk constantly about what could be. “Lower your expectations,” I’m told. Why? Why should we lower our expectations? Nobody ever gives me a good reason why I should. 

I’ve seen many people rise to the occasion. Many have told me how it compels them to push harder to achieve more. There’s enormous power in having people expect things of us. And there’s power in expecting our enterprises to be better, too. 

But it starts with us expecting more of ourselves!

Why should the boss expect employees to improve, perform at higher levels, and grow when he doesn’t do any of those things? Because sometimes bosses are hypocrites.

Good leaders aren’t hypocrites. 

Leadership is about influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves. So leaders first do. They show others the way by showing them what’s possible. Even though others may be unable to see the possibility. It’s been said that great leaders see the future first. That’s why all this consideration to potential is important. What do YOU see as potential? Are you limiting it to something safe and unchallenging? That will most certainly impact your leadership. 

What if you’re not aiming high enough? What if you could be much better? What if your team or company could be MUCH better? Would you regret not helping yourself, your team and your company achieve high performance simply because you couldn’t see it happen before it did? 

Self-limiting beliefs aren’t isolated to losers. We all have our share of battles to fight with beliefs that hold us back and restrict our growth. 

Cartoonist Walt Kelly coined the phrase in 1970 on an anti-pollution Earth Day poster. It’s true of our leadership, too.

Here’s a hard truth – those at the top are most often the constraint. We’re the bottleneck that too frequently prevents higher performance. The sooner we accept that possibility the sooner we can get busy building bigger dreams…and showing others how much more we can all do to grow and get better!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 8. Session 8 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. 

Yesterday I mentioned management theory X and Y. These are important because how you choose to see the world and your place in it matters greatly to your leadership potential. 

Theory X basically puts forth that people will not do work – much less good work – unless management imposes it on them. It’s the old adage that you have to kick people in the rear to get good work out of them.

Theory Y supposes that people want to do good work. They need the right environment (and support) to help them do that. 

Well, you’d be hard-pressed to find two completely opposite approaches. I was in my 20s before I had ever heard of theory Y. No matter, it’s how I viewed the world and my place in it because as a teenage hi-fi stereo sales guy I knew I wanted to do good work. I wanted to make a positive difference. Many of my co-workers did, too. Mostly, everybody I knew worked for a tyrant. Men who were more interested in padding their wealth, buying the latest cool foreign car, taking some European vacation, and buying a bigger house. This was the zero-sum era of American enterprise where the business owner won and the rest of us lost. But I didn’t know any better. I just knew that as a straight commission salesperson I wouldn’t earn a dime if I didn’t produce. For me, the customer was king. I wanted to dazzle customers from day 1 of my working career because it just seemed to me that THAT was the path toward success. 

By the time I got my first leadership role where I was the #1 (the person running the show), I was fully prepared to put my own theories to the test. They were formed by a decade of working retail, engaging customer after customer, learning merchandising and purchasing and creating a philosophy that remarkable service with honesty was the path forward. Bait ‘n switch was commonplace in retail when I began my life in retail as a 16-year-old. I was taught it even though I never practiced it. “Yes, we ran that in our ad, but…” is a phrase I uttered hundreds, if not thousands of times. Thankfully, I started my career in shops that didn’t advertise. Ever. So that helped. But even then there were items on our showroom that were more fixtures than items to be sold. They were figuratively nailed to the shelf, not to be sold. 

By the 1980s arrived I was ready to put my philosophy of honesty, integrity, and doing the right thing to the test. Coupled with my notion that people wanted to do good work, and a few of us wanted to do great work. Turns out, I was right. It worked. No, not 100% of the time, but most of the time. There were exceptions. People too lazy, too dishonest, too whatever to be good humans. But mostly my philosophies proved successful. It was during these early “testing” years that I realized the environment I provided as a manager and leader made all the difference. We didn’t yet really focus on “company culture.”

You have to remember that Peters and Waterman’s book, “In Search Of Excellence” was published in 1982. That book ushered in the advent of serious business book publications. Business titles exploded onto the shelves of bookstores after that book hit big! I had long prowled bookstores for books on sales, management, leadership and self-improvement. But now the space blew up in all the best ways and the business buzzwords along with it. Including “company culture.”

My own view likened it to a garden. I’m not sure why. All I can figure is I knew plenty of folks who had gardens, even though I never remember my parents having one. I grew up well acquainted with gardens where peas, tomatoes, okra and other vegetables were grown, harvested and picked. Then cooked and eaten. Daily. My childhood was filled with homecooked meals where fresh food was a staple. Maybe that’s why I saw the company as a garden where we could help people grow! 

I learned the hard way that the company could also grow weeds. Unproductive, toxic people. And sooner than later I learned it was urgent to get rid of them. Fast. Before they could do more damage to the people trying to do good work. My intolerance for poor performance was sparked by my years working alongside sloths willing to let me do grunt work that all of us were required to do, along with our jobs on the sales floor. As I’d learn, a few of us did whatever we needed to do – whatever would help us be better – and many people would let us as they took smoke breaks, or loafed about. 

I was busy creating an environment that would put positive pressure on the sloths to change their ways. Or get gone. Or get caught up in my efforts to get the weeds out of the garden. 

But it all started with a fundamental belief that people want to succeed. If given the option, I believed most people would rather do good – and be good – than not. Here I am today, four decades later and I now know I was right. I’ve spent my life testing it and I’m here today to tell you that if you have a more negative view of people, then you’ll see evidence to back up your belief because you will take action to make sure you’re right. And the sad collateral damage you’ll cause will be impossible to calculate. Along with the impossible calculation of what might have been. 

We’ll talk about that tomorrow – what could be, what might have been!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Influence.

Doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves.

That’s leadership. It’s not power. Or authority. Or being in charge. It’s not about being the boss. 

We’re so fixated on titles, positions, and power that we often overlook or discount leadership. We think authority is the key to it all. But it’s not. 

I’m not discounting the power of authority (pun intended). It can serve a tremendous benefit when a good or great leader has it. It can also be disastrous if a person without leadership skills has it. I call them tyrants. 

Let’s talk about authority’s role in leadership.

Leadership doesn’t require authority. It certainly isn’t equal to authority, but authority most certainly can enhance leadership because it affords the leader the power to more quickly eliminate or reduce roadblocks for people. 

Are you a boss? Then I encourage you to take a binary view of your authority. I know life isn’t this simple, but a binary view of your authority will serve you to become a more effective leader. 

Tyranny or service? Those are your choices. Admittedly there are degrees of both, but they’re still tyranny or service. 

I only use “servant leadership” because it’s in the cultural vernacular. It’s redundant though because leadership is all about service. Else, it’s tyranny and not leadership. It’s authority, power, coercision, manipulation, intimidation and all sorts of other things. But it’s NOT leadership (influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves). 

You’ve got a title. You’ve got authority. Great! 

Now decide how you’re going to use it. Do you want to be a tyrant or a leader? You will pick one that most characterizes your daily actions. One will emerge victorious in your career. People will judge you as one or the other. And you get to decide. 

Tyrants lean heavily on the command and control tactics many of us grew up learning (we old guys and gals). Bark out orders. Embrace management theory X. If we don’t make people do the work, it won’t get done. So we control as much as we possibly can. We tighten our grip knowing if we don’t do it ourselves, it won’t get done. 

Leaders lean heavily on the talents, abilities, initiatives and ambitions of individuals and on the collective. Yes, there may be times to bark out orders, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes, especially in a crisis, it’s appropriate for command and control to be used in order to serve people – and protect them, their jobs and our enterprise. Leaders embrace management theory Y. People wake up daily wanting to do good work. Hoping to make a contribution so they can make a difference. People want to know they’re relied upon by others. Leaders provide a positive environment – culture – that fosters the growth of the individual and the entire team, group or organization. 

The terrific thing about the leadership who has authority is that she can more quickly do for others what they’re unable to do for themselves. 

Consider an accounting department with a quirk in their data entry. Every time they set up a vendor or a customer they have to go to two separate screens to enter basic information TWICE. It’s cumbersome and frustrating for them. Daily they wonder, “Why won’t somebody fix this?” 

The leader with authority learns of the problem and quickly asks the MIS (management information systems) folks to contact the enterprise software vendor about a remedy. Within a week the vendor comes back with a cost effective solution that can be pushed out during the off hours without business disruption. The leader with authority signs off on it and within 4 business days the fix is in and the second screen that required repetitive input no longer has those same fields. In fact, the vendor is now working on a new release that will streamline data entry even more. 

The accounting staff didn’t have the power to make this problem go away. The leader did. And she used it wisely to help her people perform better. 

Authority and power aren’t negative things. Unless in the hands of a tyrant. 

In the hands of a leader, they’re remarkably effective to elevate performance throughout the enterprise. Now you know why those leadership components (recipe ingredients) are so critical. And why humility is the foundational ingredient. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Welcome to days 5 and 6 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course…for Sunday, September 5th and 6th. Labor Day Weekend and out-of-town company, coupled with just too much stuff going on derailed my continuity briefly. Hey, it happens. So we adapt, right? So today let’s compress two days into a single episode. 

We’re going to advance in our progression of leadership components and talk first about understanding. 

We’ve established that we begin with the most important ingredient, humility. That fosters curiosity where we work to seek answers. More accurately, we seek knowledge. And we need knowledge so we can understand. This is the opposite of much of what we see in the world today. For good reason. Understanding is hard. Judgment is easy. To be more specific, harsh judgment is easy. 

What is understanding? 

Let’s keep things simple and straightforward. Understanding is accurate comprehension. Clarity. Whether it’s a situation, a relationship, what was said, what was written…whatever it is, it’s the clear comprehension of what’s happening or what has happened.

Does it have to be perfect? No. But it has to be more perfect than not. Confirmation is required. How? Communication. 

An employee who mostly performs far above average is struggling. She’s obviously somewhat disengaged, but her manager chooses not to jump to a conclusion. After a few days of quiet observation, he calls her into his office for a conversation. 

“Margaret, I wanted to check on you because you’re not yourself lately. I can tell something is wrong and I wondered if I might be able to help you.”

Margaret looks down, her eyes well up and her lips begin to quiver. 

“Margaret, I don’t want to pry in areas that are none of my business, but you’re such a valuable employee…I want to make sure I’m doing whatever I can to support you.”

He hands her a tissue and gives her space to gather herself so she can speak. She proceeds to tell him that 3 days ago her mother, a cancer survivor, received word from her latest checkup. “It’s back,” she said. “And it’s not good.”  She breaks down weeping. 

Do you think her manager understands? Do you think this situation is now clear? Of course. Both people share an understanding of the true circumstance of what’s happening. There is no conjecture. No false assumptions. Just honest, open truth that they can now face together – at least as far as Margaret’s work is concerned. 

Consider what could have happened. No conversation. No questions. Just constant, nagging wondering, “What’s going on with Margaret?” 

Communication is required. Dialogue. Not talking at somebody. Not talking to somebody. Seeking answers with questions. And doing so without critical judgment, but rather with empathy and compassion so we can first understand what’s happening. 

Our understanding will determine what happens next…or what we think should happen. 

The various understandings I’ve had through the years include marital infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, financial problems, deaths, fatal diagnoses, career unhappiness, gambling problems and legal problems. In most cases, there’s no way I could have known without asking questions. And without knowing, understanding would have been impossible. I often think of the disasters I’ve avoided because I didn’t jump to a conclusion before I gained understanding.

Compassion. 

You could argue that we need this all along the way. I wouldn’t press the matter. Empathy is crucial and maybe my view of empathy is slightly more nuanced than most. I view empathy is the willingness to understand before you render a judgment. For a guy like me who lives by and coaches other to “figure it out,” I want to make sure I’m doing whatever I can to figure it out so I can be accurate in my judgment. I hate getting it wrong and know that compassion is the high point of it all because it gives us the power to really make a positive difference. 

I’m reminded of this every time I see a close friend and we part telling each other, “I love you.” I have a fair number of people in my life who are comfortable telling me that. And I’m comfortable telling them. It’s not a complicated thing really. Two humans who share compassion toward one another because we understand each other. If we didn’t, compassion would be improbable or impossible. 

Compassion is our ability to suffer together. When it comes to leadership, I’d add another component. It’s the ability to suffer together and help the other person move forward. Even if it’s only slight movement. 

Margaret’s manager did what he could to help her move forward. He developed a plan so Margaret could take additional time off to tend to her mother. He went into action for Margaret, working with her to facilitate whatever support he could. Can he deal with it for Margaret? No. There are many things he cannot do for Margaret, but he did the things he could. He suffered with Margaret and helped her move forward at work so her struggle wouldn’t negatively impact her career. Margaret left that meeting knowing she had support and concern from her boss. It was a load off. Additionally, she gave him permission to share the news with her teammates so they too could properly understand. Their support in the coming weeks proved invaluable. 

Margaret’s mother struggled through many months of treatments and sickness. Within a year, she died. Today, Margaret is thankful for the support she got at work. Says Margaret, “I can’t imagine what might have happened if Phil (her boss) hadn’t called me into this office that day. I was almost completely shut down and it was getting worse by the hour. Phil noticed immediately, but he waited 2 days. Two days, but no more. I’ve asked him why he approached me beginning the third day that he noticed I had changed. He said he wanted to make sure it wasn’t just some passing something that might be none of his business, but he also gave allowances that it might be something I needed time to process. I feel sorry for people who work for a boss that isn’t that in touch with them. He’s such a terrific leader. I’m thankful to be on his team.”

Humility.

Curiosity.

Knowledge.

Understanding.

Compassion. 

Make sure you never run out of any of these ingredients. They will serve you well as you build yourself into the leader you most want and need to be.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 4. September 4, 2021. 

Let’s continue where we left off yesterday with our next ingredient or component, knowledge.

Some folks think this should go first, but I’ve intentionally placed humility and curiosity in front of it because without those knowledge acquisition is impossible. Just log onto any social media platform and find a post where there’s disagreement. Moments ago I saw a post about some marketing session conducted in 2019. The post included a link to the YouTube video. One of the first commenters lambasted the session with statement after statement for which he provided no evidence. He was critical about who might have been in the audience and wrote an entire paragraph filled with harsh judgment. I clicked the link that took me to the YouTube video where the description gave answers to his criticisms, none of which turned out to be accurate. I spent about 10 seconds scanning that. I never clicked play on the video. Ten seconds. That’s all it took to find out the commenter was completely wrong. He likely spent minutes crafting his criticism. So it goes. 

Knee-jerk reactions. Fast assumptions. Never mind the facts. Don’t bother us with those! 😉 

That’s why humility and curiosity precede knowledge. This commenter already knew everything about the situation. Arrogance. Pride. Hubris. He exhibited no curiosity because his mind was made up – and closed. Let’s not follow his lead.

Yesterday the Washington Post published an article about how misinformation on Facebook gets much greater attention than actual news. A cursory look at social media shows us how misinformation gets easily spread. Hitting the share button or the retweet button are easy. We flash through information, spending seconds – or fractions of seconds, and then we move on. Building on our assumptions, true or not. We think what we think. We believe what we believe. 

My first foray into the world of evidence-based leadership (it didn’t have a name at the time), came because I was always very intuitive, but I got something very wrong early in my career. I felt like I valued truth and evidence, but it turns out I didn’t view it as important as I should. So I made up my mind I was going to do better. I started leaning on evidence to make sure my intuition was even more accurate. My curse was that my intuition was so highly accurate. Until it wasn’t. 

I had to exercise great care to make sure I wasn’t looking for “facts” to back up my intuition. I wanted to follow the facts wherever they took me, then engage my intuition. It was a process, but I worked at it and got better by exercising the skills. 

Think about a time you got it completely wrong. Wrong about a person. Wrong about a situation. How did you feel? 

It’s awful. Knowledge helps us avoid that feeling. Well, at least it can help us avoid it more often. Everybody gets it wrong sometimes. We follow evidence or knowledge only to realize…it’s not correct. Again, having humility and curiosity – and the bravery to question the answers we think are rock solid – help us become better leaders. 

What do we already know to be true? I mean, really know. What things are we most certain about? 

Clarification is part of the process that’s often overlooked in our quest to get on with solving the problem. Have you ever solved a problem only to find out THAT wasn’t the problem? Yeah, me too. That may feel even worse than getting something completely wrong. It’s a different kind of getting it wrong made worse because some work has taken place to solve a problem that wasn’t the real problem after all. 

So you can see there really is no way to separate humility and curiosity from knowledge acquisition. Even when we think we have the knowledge, we often need to question it to make sure. But we’re in a rush. And I don’t know what for. Ten seconds to see the Facebook commenter was ignorant, foolish and lazy. Versus minutes to craft a harsh comment. It just doesn’t seem like a good exchange to me. 

Lastly, we need to think about the source for our knowledge. Who are we going to listen to? Who will we ask? 

Don’t limit yourself. More is better. It’ll validate or nullify the knowledge as true, or false, or something we’re not sure about. Leaders often have selective sources of knowledge. It’s a foolish path. Don’t negate the value of anybody to help you learn something. Many a leader has tripped because they didn’t like the source (the person), so they ignored knowledge that was being shared. Let the knowledge stand on its own. It either holds up, or it doesn’t. Or we’re not sure. 

And seek knowledge as close to the work as possible. The people who do the work daily must be consulted. Their paycheck doesn’t determine their true worth in figuring out what’s wrong, and how to fix it. A minimum-wage worker who is vexed daily by an idiotic system can provide truth and knowledge more quickly than somebody who has never performed that task. Again, humility is at work helping us learn. Don’t discount the most ideal sources of knowledge because they’re not top-level management folks. Those closest to the work know more about what ails our organization at an operational level. 

Learn, learn, learn! Make up your mind that you’re going to increase your knowledge, then get busy seeking answers – and questioning the answers you think you already have. Remember, the truth will always withstand rigorous testing. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 3. September 3rd, 2021. Welcome to the 30 Day Micro Leadership Course. 

Yesterday we began talking about the leadership recipes – the components that makeup what I’ve long called the “leadership progression.” Humility is the foundation. Until we make sure we’re on the firm footing of humility, nothing else can be built.

So let’s move on and talk about curiosity. 

My 8-year-old grandson, Easton, somehow got fixated on the subject of cholesterol. And he wouldn’t let it go. Like a snapping turtle, he was not going to let it go until we answered a gazillion questions. One question answered sparked many more questions as we talked about blood, veins, arteries, the heart, and whatever else was on his mind. Using our phones we were showing him diagrams we’d find online. He had never heard of these things and his curiosity was on fire. 

Naive curiosity is powerful…which is why humility is so vital. Easton has no arrogance or harmful pride. Not yet. I hope to do whatever I can as his granddad to help him maintain his naive curiosity so he can accelerate his knowledge, understanding, and growth as long as possible. I hope he stays humble and curious throughout his life. I’m optimistic!

The Smartest-person-in-the-room syndrome is just the opposite of curiosity. Arrogance and pride prevent learning. And growth. But you can go that route if you insist. 

Together we go further faster. It’s simple math. Multiple sources of knowledge, insight and experience benefit everybody in the room. But it demands both humility and curiosity. 

Question Like A 2-Year-Old

Over time life tends to influence us to stop asking questions for fear we’ll look stupid. We’d prefer to not look stupid even though we are. But the alternative is more powerful – to look stupid briefly as we increase our smartness! Technically speaking, it’s not stupidity at all. Easton isn’t stupid. He just does not yet know about some things. Like cholesterol. So by asking, he learns more quickly. And he learns from everybody involved in the conversation, which at this point happened to be my wife and me. It works the same way for us.

Maybe there are stupid questions, but who cares? Ask them anyway. You never know what you’ll discover. 

Years ago I entered an industry that was foreign to me. My naivete was an enormous benefit. I was too ignorant to be proud so I quickly asked questions about things that most folks in that industry just took for granted. Repeatedly, I’d ask about something only to be told, “I don’t know. We’ve just always done it that way.” 

By looking at an industry with totally naive eyes I was able to foster thinking that others wouldn’t have dared embrace on their own. I questioned everything. Not to challenge it all, but to understand. I just followed my curiosity wherever it took me and I kept following it until my curiosity was satisfied. 

What do you have to lose? Besides your ignorance? Or false assumptions?

If you think your pride is on the line, then go back one show to think more deeply about your humility.  Only you can answer whether your pride is worth ignorance. It’s not a good trade. You don’t have to trust me. Just examine your life – and whatever observations you’ve made about others who thought they knew more than they actually did. 

Innovation is fun. Creativity, too. And they’re not possible without curiosity. No leader ever solved important problems without it. And this is all about being better leaders capable of influencing others to grow. 

Lastly, you’ll find something remarkable happens when you exhibit blatant curiosity. It will spread. And attract other curious folks. Others will bring their questions to the party and they may ask questions you haven’t thought out. Everybody benefits from the questions and the answers. The knowledge and understanding of the collective in the room grows exponentially. Few things feel as rewarding.

Be well. Do good. Grow great.